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Dessert

Stone Cream

A chilled custard made with isinglass, thin cream, sugar, lemon rind, sherry or raisin wine, served over preserved apricots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and apricot work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in a small quantity of water.

  2. Add the dissolved isinglass to the thin cream and sweeten to taste.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Assemble and serve

  1. Grate the lemon rind into the sherry or raisin wine.

  2. Place the preserved apricots or other preserves in a dish.

  3. When the cream is almost cold, carefully pour it over the preserves.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sherry + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the cream into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Thin cream
Provides the rich, creamy base that the isinglass sets.
Sherry or raisin wine
Adds aromatic flavor and a touch of acidity to the dish.
Preserved apricots
Adds fruity sweetness and a light-colored layer beneath the cream.

The step that matters

Pour the cream when it is almost cold. If the cream is still hot, it can mix with and melt the preserves instead of settling over them. Waiting until it is almost cold lets the isinglass begin to set the cream so it holds its layer.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, sherry, apricot):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, sherry, apricot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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